Hands up who want to have some fun with paper! All our hands have been waving in the air, they have also been traced on paper and covered in paint. Give an extra personal touch to your childrens craft by using their hands as the focal point.

Hand prints are the starter for so many different critters and creatures. I have selected three of my favourite to show here. No instructions needed for these creations, just make your hand print and use the pictures as a guide.

It is probably not normal to be excited about being able to make super cute elephants out of hand prints, but I was very excited when we made these. The hand print makes the perfect elephant shape once you add a few details.

The fish is very popular in hand print art circles! It is very easy for a child to add just a few details to their hand print and they have a fish. Make a tropical fish by painting a pattern on the hand before printing it.

Another classic hand print, and for a very good reason. What a perfect way to tug at heart strings!

This is a very speedy and very effective craft - they make a very special bunch of flowers for someone. You need paper and scissors, tape, and chenille sticks or pipe cleaners to make the stem and stamen.

The basis of these lilies are hand shapes. So the first step is to trace around a hand and cut the shape out. Roll the hand into a cone shape and tape it near the base. Leave a small hole at the bottom of the cone shape.

Wrap each finger around a pen ...

... to curl the petals

Twist the end of a green piece of pipe cleaner around the middle of a short piece of pipe cleaner. Fold that short piece up and curl over at each end

Push the pipe cleaner stalk through the lily to make the stalk and stamen.

This is creepily cute! I was so impressed with what excellent legs our finger shapes made on our spider. Keep it away from easily frightened folk!

You will need:
- a toilet roll, stapled close at each end as pictured

- hand shapes, minus the thumbs, traced onto black paper

Then you need to:

- Paint the squashed toilet paper roll black.
- Glue the hand shapes to the bottom of the spider and bend the fingers to create the legs.
- Add spidery decorations like a glittery red back.

Consult with the closest expert on spider anatomy - in this case it was my son, and then add the desired number of eyes. He thought that they had two big eyes and up to six little ones - sounded good to me. He commented they would not be in a nice tidy row like I have done, but it is so cute with them in a row and that is important on toilet paper roll spiders!

Assemble the shapes as pictured. For the red comb and yellow feet we thought that the chicken looked better without the thumb on each hand shape. On the wings we layered up some hand shapes and curled the fingers a little to give the wings a feathery look.